The results at the high school graduation exam Baccalaureate and the results at the National Evaluation, an exam that eight-graders sit, lead the top five of the most popular searches made by Romanians on Google in 2018. These are followed by searches on eMag Black Friday, the World Cup football competition and tennis player Simona Halep.

The top 10 of 2018 searches also includes “Orthodox calendar”, “picnic word”, “Andrei Gheorghe”, “Avicii” and “high school entrance.” Romanian radio host Andrei Gheorghe passed away this year, as did DJ Avicii.

Tennis overcame football in the top Google searches on sports this year and the most searched sport events were: the World Cup, ranked first; followed by the Australian Open; Wimbledon; US Open; Indian Wells; Roland Garros; the matches Romania – Serbia, Real Madrid – Liverpool, Steaua – Lazio; and the Winter Olympics.

Exatlon, a sports-reality format; reality show Insula iubirii (Temptations Island); Asia express, an adventure reality show; Chefi la cuţite, a cooking show; and the music festival Cerbul de aur (Golden Stag), were the top five most searched TV shows locally.

In the film searches category, Fifty shades freed tops the ranking, followed by The Nun, a box office hit shot in Romania, Venom, Bohemian rhapsody, Deadpool 2, Jumanji, Moromeţii 2, Black panther, A star is born, and Red sparrow.

iPhone XS is at the top of smartphone searches, followed by Huawei Mate 20 Pro, iPhone X, Huawei P20, Samsung S9, Huawei P20 Lite, Huawei P20 Pro, iPhone XR, Huawei P10 Lite, and Samsung Note 9.

The most searched recipes were for tiramisu, guacamole, spaghetti carbonara, socată (a traditional soft drink made from the flowers of the European elder or elderberry), and mămăliga (polenta).

Financial and health topics found their places in the top ten searches of “What is…?” category. Bitcoin leads the ranking of the searches here, followed by “What is electricity?”, “What is January 24?” (the day the Romanian provinces of Moldova and Tara Romaneasca united in 1859), “What is immunoglobulin?”, “What is swine fever?”, “What is orgasm?”, “What is Form 600?” (a fiscal form all Romanian individuals who made revenues from independent activities over a certain threshold last year were supposed to fill in and submit), “What is pension pillar II?”, “What is edelweiss for mountain climbers?” and “What is the noun?”

Romanians were also interested in diets, and the most searched were the Rina diet, the Indian diet, Carmen Brumă diet, Mara Bănică diet, and  Tisanoreica diet.

The lists of searches were compiled using data from Google Trends and other internal instruments of Google. They are based on traffic numbers from addresses from Romania, and searches made on google.com, google.ro and mobile searches.

Landmarks of Romania’s 1918 Union can be explored virtually with Google Street View

(Photo: Pixabay)

editor@romania-insider.com